The Pope recently acknowledged the validity of the theory of evolution. Which is fine with me. Faith and Science are not meant to be in lock step. Science is rife with models that work well within certain confinements and badly when you expand the scope. Physics for instance.
So whenever anyone outside of possibly a mathematician tells you something is fact, you have to wonder.
My main problem with Evolution is the very beginning of life on Earth. The various papers and text books always say something like. The conditions were just right to produce life.
Which is not unlike spontaneous generation right? Then you go back further, the universe has limitations in what can and cannot be done, commonly referred to laws. How are these in place? or more simply why does the universe behave the way it does?
Around this point science and belief systems are in a murky area. You either say God or shrug depending upon the person.
In trying to wrap your mind around this various analogies can arrive. The closest one I can think of is computer programming.
A programmer is limited by two major obstacles, The sheer power of the computer system and imagination. So you put in place a computer with infinite power and a programmer with omniscience. (No Shoo I am NOT referring to you in any way). That programmer now has to set in parameters to allow the rest of his creation to work.
"God does not play dice with the universe. " -- Albert Einstein
Apparantly, God GM's world of warcraft...
7 comments:
Here's my approach, Lee---God created just three things. Physical law, matter, and energy. He made the three just right so that the universe would unfold to this point of blogging each other. If the physical constants weren't exactly where they are, planets wouldn't coalesce, orbits would be messed up, things wouldn't be stable. But they are. And so are we.
My older catechism says that as Catholics we can decide about life's origins,as long as we recognize
1) At some point there were people who could decide between right and wrong and,
2)He/she they chose wrong.
I like how Genesis tells us in DAYS how long it took to create everything.
Of course, it can't possibly be days as WE know them, since the earth was being created.
So it's going by God's Days in Genesis.
Which reminds me of a joke (that Diana just told me)...
A man meets up with God and says,
"Hey God, how long is a million years to you?"
God says, "One second."
"God?" the man asks, "how much is a million dollars to you?"
God replies, "A penny."
The man asks, "Hey God, can I have a penny?"
God answers, "In a second..."
I agree with Steve, that for everything to work out the way it has (so far) is the very definition of a miracle.
I lost a very good friend when I was in Alabama over this issue. His church was telling everyone that the earth was only 10,000 years old and (get this) dinosaurs NEVER existed. Their bones were placed there by God to "confound the ungodly". I expressed my belief that while God does have a sense of humor (ie the platypus), HE does not go around hiding things just to piss us off.
God does not have to play dice with the universe because what happens follows the laws of physics, which science has observed and written down. While God may not be bound by these laws, everything up till now has more or less followed them. Something outside these laws may happen in the future, but that is up to God.
The Alabama minister you mentioned is a strict fundementalist. As such they have narrowed thier scope to the point that the parables of Jesus are 'events'.
I recall a catholic priest at one of the youth conventions speaking on this topic.
He posed the question of why would an all powerful being take six days to create the world then rest on the seventh? Seeing as how he could create everything in an instant.
The reason could be to set an example, hence the Sabbath. Man needs a day off "after all God took one"
what a surprisingly excellent post.
there's a compelling argument in quantum mechanics that says the laws of physics are not deterministic. ie given the same starting state you can have vastly divergent outcomes. experiments tend to support the notion. these hidden variables are modeled as random. but there's no reason why there couldn't be some intelligent designer behind the scenes directing things. though said god would have to follow certain rules. which are more restrictions on how. not on what.
There is no God.
But there is a First Programmer.
Oh yeah? Then who made the first computer?
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